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Isn’t Nothing practically a Chinese brand with just the marketing department working in the UK?
Spez is also part of Nothing
Fuck it then.
I couldn’t find anything on that, do you have a source?
Holy Hell
Also, there’s a EU flag but the UK has been so stupid to leave the EU.
Yes. It is a Chinese company with american investors with non-technical jobs in the UK to be able to claim “UK company” for marketing.
Their electronics are designed only in China, the devices are programmed only in China, their software is developed in China their technical job postings are all in China for years, their CEO ran a previous Chinese owned brand (lying/misleading about the company back then too) and has worked in the Chinese phone industry for 15 years.
Their CMF line and wearables lines are all ODM’ed through various Chinese companies (for those not aware, OEM is where something is designed by a company and manufactured by another where ODM is where everything is designed by another company and the branded company just gives requirements and some input, I worked previously for an ODM kind of company) and are generic widely-available hardware marked up for brand name recognition.
Their marketing is in the UK, that’s about it.
Isn’t it also called white label?
Yep, also. That is the more “business/financial” term I think.
I had an RMA claim with nothing a few days ago and wow, did I hate it. They threw every stone they could find at me, and then managed to “forget” a part of the money they owed me.
Which is a shame, because I really dig their design. But fuck them.
I’m not too familiar how the company is managed, but I have Nothing 3. It’s fine. Nothing special (unless you count the flashing lights on the back), gets the job done but so does pretty much every other android-based slab. At least it isn’t full of vendor forced crap like samsung.
It is fully unlockable still, though, and has custom roms, so it’s under consideration for when my phone gives up the ghost. Not many brands left with easy bootloader unlocks.
@RmDebArc_5 @maam this is the reality of most Western businesses. Production in China and company address in the West
The audiophiles will crucify me, but I will accept two USBC ports as consolation.
I just hate how bulky most c connectors are and feel like that they break more easily because of that.
Right, there are cheap usb-c headphone now lol. Really no reason not to have high quality headphones with their own dedicated high end DAC
One advantage of USB-C earbuds is that they can have ANC without needing an integrated battery or other power source, since they are powered by the USB-C port
There is this kind of audiophile that pretends that USB DAC’s are better anyways
(They arent, for normal headphones)
But in actual reality, a good quality USB dongle (like apple’s for example) there is little to no hearable or measurable difference. Hell, over on reddit, someone just did a casual blind test again with a few audiophile friends and they all failed.
Every blind test done in the past decade has proven this over and over and over again.
Audio is extremely easy with modern ICs. You can get DAC ICs for 2-3€ that sounds the same as DACs products for 200€. We are reaching terahertz DACs now. Gigahertz DACs are established. <100kHz can be perfectly recreated now cheaply and in a tiny footprint.
Volume, sure, they won’t necessarily drive 600Ohm headphones loud enough, but that is an AMP problem, not a DAC problem.
(Though this is even more reason that an on-board phone DAC is ridiculously easy and there is no need for removing the headphone jack)
Of course not but it uses USB so you cannot block that which increases attack surface for no reason
Nobody can hack you via a headphone jack
And Apple heavily reduces the volume on non-Apple devices, which is very audible on bigger headphones. Mine are made to be used on normal hardware but they are already quite limited. Fine, but at the total max volume.
Audio is extremely easy with modern ICs.
Yes and that is why DACs are stupid
causing wear on your port (where you need to remove the display to replace it, and that you use for charging AND data transfer) is stupid
It is not okay that they cost minimum 10€
Low quality usb plugs will cause wear on your port. I had cheap ones and they were fine but got a bad contact very quickly.
Builtin jacks are so amazing. They just work. They make tech pleasant, instead of worrying about silly connectivity issues that nobody should care about
I already have two pairs of bricked bluetooth headphones, I won’t have a third.
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What you get for the price is a European phone. No way it can compete on hardware/price with other phones.
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The upcoming Jolla is manufactured in Finland afaik. Or maybe assembled is a better word? Smartphone components come from around the world and not just China.
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Part of the reason other phones are cheaper is because you’re the product. They’re collecting data and selling it. If you don’t want this you’re going to have to pay more.
other phones are cheaper mostly due to economies of scale, though. like, idk, china makes a few million phones at once, while in europe they make, what, a few thousand phones at once?
Volla runs Ubuntu Touch.
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They are all so fucking huge! Can’t anyone make a good <= 6" Phone anymore?
Seriously, I want a phone that I can hold in one hand, and my thumb can reach the entirety of the screen. My current phone is so bulky and heavy, I can barely reach half the screen with my thumb.
Are you Donald Trump?
Unfortunately(?) no, if I was I’d be able to afford a convenient micro sized phone. Or I’d just demand some tech company make it for me.
Have you looked at Sony? Their phones used to be more narrow, iirc.
I haven’t, do you have any specific recommendations? These Xperias seem just as big, if not bigger, than the phone I currently have. And I don’t know if narrower is necessarily the solution to my problem either, I know we live in a 16:9 world, but I kind of just want a square phone.
Yea 6 inch is like the limit of a good sized phone for me. Phablets have gone too far.
Yea totally agree, but I guess that’s just the norm…. That’s why I’m “stuck” with the iPhone Mini.
Wait what? Jolla? Not only does that company exist, they are also making phones again? Really wasn’t expecting to see that name ever again.
Fairphone has an atrocious update policy. They do not care for security.
I’ll pick Jolla. I hope their new phone will be good.
Isn’t HMD like Finnish
HMD is Chinese but owns a lot of former Nokia intellectual property that was related to is phones. (NOKIA had a lot of other business assets that they didn’t buy)
They are headquartered in Finland
I just wish there was a way to get the Fairphone in the U.S. I love the repairability aspect and I already use LineageOS as my main OS to keep my devices as long as possible. I also have access to a 3D printer to build accessories and parts for them too.
A good idea if you can’t buy Euro is to buy used and flash LineageOS if your device is supported. I’m using a Pixel 4a 5G as my driver with LineageOS since I know how to repair it and I have easy access to parts for them. (Thanks to buying bulk parts from local offices near me that used them.)
Pretty sure Murena (the guys behind /e/os) sell it in the US.
I don’t know who Murena is, but I appreciate you sharing this with me! I will definitely look into them! Do they just go by Murena or do they have a Merchant front with a different name?
Murena is the name of the company. Here’s a link to their US site: https://murena.com/america/products/smartphones/?wcpbc-manual-country=US
Well, I suppose that you can order one via international delivery company straight from a manufacturer/seller. It may be more expensive and longer to wait but totally possible.
I thought about doing it, but the prices for parts and importing them was my reasoning to stop because of the tariffs and the already high price of the product. But I might give it a go once I run out of parts for my Pixel 4A 5g or the LineageOS maintainer stops working on it.
I just want a dumbphone with a decent camera
Won’t happen. You can always make a smartphone dumber, but you can’t make a dumb phone smarter. Also good smartphone cameras require decent SOCs
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I bought a fairphone 6 recently. It works as you would expect any phone to work with no noticeable downsides.
I paid extra to have /e/OS preinstalled. I could have bought the android version and upgraded it myself, but I wanted to support open source development. I want to try Ubuntu touch, but it hasn’t been updated for the fairphone 6 yet.
I can’t use any banking apps on /e/OS by default, but that’s because the apps require google play services for “security”. Enabling these services is possible, but would defeat the purpose of getting the phone to de-google. Bank websites still work, just slightly less convenient.
I dislike the case. It leaves more of the phone exposed than I would like. It does seem to protect the phone from most drops though.
I’m still disappointed by the lack of headphone jack, but I hate Google more.
I was surprised that my favourite feature became the hardware switch. I rebound it to the torch. For moments when you want a light for just a few seconds, it’s so much more convenient.
Hey Europe, what about you sign that partnership with Mercosul so I can buy you damn stuff without having to pay 100% taxes on the price to import?
Here’s hoping, Brazil and Europe deserve to succeed!
I had a Fairphone 3, but ran into a lot of problems with the phone suddenly shutting down on its own. I hadn’t fiddled with it at all, and I couldn’t find much advice apart from “Try pulling it apart, cleaning it, and putting it back together again”.
I really love the concept though, but I’m worried my bank and government identification won’t work on Fairphone now.
Instead of being worried about compatibility, read about experiences and lists. It depends on the OS
Fairphone runs proprietary Android by default, with a locked bootloader. There should be zero issues why banks should block this, as they dont actually care about security
Shiftphone is a German alternative to Fairphone
Unfortunately GrapheneOS only supports Pixels.
Buy them used to prevent the money from going to Google and donate the savings to Graphene.
Or, simply don’t create value for used pixel devices by not buying them. Buying used phones of one brand will make it’s resell value for up. People like new phones with a good resell value, people buy those phones. Buying a used pixel gives money to Google.
